Who will die today? The crucial purpose of Christmas is to celebrate a birth, yet instead our screens and airwaves have been filled with a non-stop catalogue of celebrity death. Households have sought out George Michael playlists and well-worn Star Wars DVDs. Even my teenage daughters have been moved to spend the morning watching Singin’ in the Rain.

But should we mourn? For ancient societies those stars who left us in 2016 would be considered to have died good deaths. As soon as humans started to co-habit we developed a fascinating notion – that the point of life is to be remembered beyond our passing. For the ancient Greeks kudos (reputation or acclaim), and kleos (heroic undying fame) were the great goals. Think of the hero Achilles choosing an early, glorious death over security, obscurity and what Homer described as the “creeping humiliations of old age”.

Even prehistoric societies – and we’re talking 8,000 years or so ago – valued what is known in our early mother-tongue Proto-Indo-European as “klewos ndhgwithom” – a fame that does not decay. With no sense of a cosmic afterlife, immortality was sought not by entering heaven (or hell), but by making our mark in the mortal world.

Of course there are downsides to soliciting immortality. We should remember that the word fame ultimately derives from the Greek pheme – gossip and slander. Those who pursue fame for fame’s sake are inviting the spectre of rumour and the pressures of false expectation across their threshold. Many mutter that it was this dark face of fame that brought Carrie Fisher and George Michael to their early graves. But I would argue that the singers and stars who have departed in 2016 lived good lives.

History’s greatest philosophers agree. Socrates, Confucius and the Buddha (although disapproving of excessive appetites) also advised us not just to live life but to love the living of it, to live well in the here and now. In ways great and small we can all follow suit. It is significant perhaps, as we commemorate these entertainers, to recall that the Muses were said to be the daughters of Memory and Power. By your deeds shall ye be known.

Other cultures across time and space are better than ours at preparing for death. For the Spartans the aim of life was to die a kalos thanatos – a beautiful death. Soldiers would oil themselves before battle and comb their hair to make themselves, “greater, more noble, more terrible”. Their rallying cry to die for what they believed in gave death purpose.

A cult of death, martyrdom, is demonstrably unhelpful. But remembering that death is always around the corner and choosing to live by our principles can be a fillip to a good life. While I was doing some research in a hospice, the head nurse told me that it is the young, those with much to live for, who meet their ends peacefully – typically those who rage against death are older men or women who harbour guilt, resentment and regret.

This Christmas I have shed many a tear for those I have loved and lost – both public figures and dearest friends. But although death is inevitable, we should remember that we can all live on in humanity’s collective memory, and that remembrance is death’s antidote.

Bettany Hughes’s book 'Istanbul, a Tale of Three Cities’ is published next month